SAP Group Reporting: Enhancements to the financial platform
The finance function is facing the challenge of mastering the digital transformation from predominantly retrospective accounting to "intelligent finance". Initial implementation projects show that this undertaking is not a short sprint with a maximum pulse, but is more like a long-distance run with long stamina. The manufacturer SAP itself is also taking the time to adapt its strategic product to future increasing requirements in group reporting with targeted developments.
SAP Group Reporting: focus on new features
In a modern accounting environment, transactional, partially manual process chains must be increasingly automated. Data must be analyzed more holistically and granularly, and therefore continuously and prospectively instead of periodically and retrospectively. Internal and external information, control and forecasting requirements are also constantly increasing. This requires a consistent record-to-report process. In addition, non-financial information is becoming increasingly important and must be able to be integrated quickly and accurately. Consolidation is becoming part of the ERP processes and will lose its "silo existence" at the end of the finance process in future.
You don't have to be a technology expert to associate the acronyms SAP S/4HANA, ACDOCA and Universal Journal with "SAP-minded" finance approaches. Group accounting experts are also familiar with the importance of the ACDUCU table and the use of ledgers for the interface-free generation of consolidated financial statements in actual reporting and the budget. From today's perspective, this knowledge will continue to be important in companies with an SAP ERP strategy for a long time to come, as SAP has discontinued the development of its legacy finance tools and is concentrating all its development power on SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting .
The SAP Group Reporting Data Collection App gets a job enrichment
The interface to the non-SAP external world will be further enhanced and will in future be able to integrate not only financial data but also non-financial information from the ESG context, for example, using pre-designed forms. According to the roadmap, the cloud-native tool "GRDC" will also have a new "Add" upload function from Q1-2024, which will greatly accelerate the integration of mass data. This will be made possible by tidier log files and better support for consistency checks for the OC account assignment level (manual corrections), for which there were previously insufficient checks.
Group Reporting Preparation Ledger: New features deepen integration with accounting
For the consolidation preparation ledger, which has been available since the 2022 release, master data required for preparing financial statements will be available in the ERP table ACDOCA in future using intelligent derivation rules. In contrast to the classic integration approach, this data, such as cons unit, segment affiliation or FS item, will be visible even before it is transferred to the ACDOCU table. This enables an "Accounting Group View" without having to start consolidation routines. Journal postings can be more precisely targeted at a granular level before the aggregated transfer to the conso table, which prepares for complete segment reporting, among other things. This includes additional standard accounting fields such as asset class, transaction type or document type as well as user-defined fields, for example from the business context. CO-PA-generated fields are also supported for SAP S/4HANA on-premise customers.
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Review Booklet App: The reporting tool for standard reporting
In future, the Review Booklet app will be the source of truth in the integrated finance platform environment for controlling and accounting. From Q3-2024, the Fiori application will be adapted even more specifically to the reporting needs of the specialist departments through standardized formats and pre-defined content. Year-on-year comparisons and different analysis views (e.g. MTD, QTD and YTD), different foreign currency presentations will then be "built-in". In addition, various organizational hierarchies (e.g. profit centers and segments) with drill-through functions are natively on board.
Analytical Snapshots app for continuous accounting
From Q4-2024, power users can use the snapshot function to "freeze" historical statuses at any time and make them available to other users without having to communicate data by email. By comparing different historical statuses, a more in-depth analysis can be carried out with regard to the impact of updated data. The reports can be expanded to include corresponding snapshot comparison columns. This is made possible by adding a dedicated reporting ID to the data model.
SAP is consistently working on adapting its strategic Finance Platform Group Reporting to the needs of controlling and accounting in terms of transparency, depth of analysis, speed and "reporting convergence" with targeted enhancements. Both cloud users and on-premise users will be able to benefit from the new features. However, the prerequisite is that the data model in the ERP as a source of financial information is already adjusted to the increasing requirements in integrated accounting.
Written by Prof. Dr. Martin Wünsch | Expert for SAP S/4HANA Transformation & Finance | [email protected]
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